It’s the new term at Goldsmiths. It feels like it’s a bit of Indian summer with the sun shining over the New Cross campus.
There’s a large “Fresher‘s” marquee on the lawn, and lots of “freshers” milling around carry leaflets and freebies. I remember the first year I started the PhD at Goldsmiths in 2009; it was weird coming back to university after a 20 year hiatus. I felt a huge feeling of hope seeing all these people devoting themselves to the life of the mind. There was, and still is, an atmosphere of relatively unselfconscious hedonism and sociability at Goldsmiths which possibly you don’t get at more “august” institutions like Oxbridge. People are not putting on “airs” here.
There was a meeting for new PhD Creative Writing students and we were introduced to the new Creative Writing tutors, Adam Mars-Jones and Naomi Wood. Adam told a funny story about how he received a grant to do a PhD from an institution situated in Honeypot Lane; he failed to complete the PhD on William Faulkner but wrote a lot of fiction instead. New students — and more seasoned ones such as myself — talked about their projects and research interests.
Professor Blake Morrison talked about the opportunities available for Creative Writing PhD on campus. The Writer’s Centre is hosting a number of readings which are not up on the website yet, but should be very soon.
The conversation turned to how Creative PhD students can have more of a collective voice and more chance to publish their own work through the aegis of the university. A few people said that it might be good to have a magazine or anthology of writing from the course. At Birkbeck, they run an “online magazine” called The Writer’s Hub. Check it out, it’s a really good forum for established writers on the course to publish their work. The Royal Holloway, Warwick, and UEA Creative Writing course publish anthologies, as does the MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths. And yet nothing for the PhD students? Why is this? Perhaps it’s because the institution feels that most writers on the course have established enough of a reputation to stand on their own two feet, and don’t need the “support” of an official publication. Or possibly it’s because that generally these anthologies don’t get much attention beyond the institution — although this was contradicted by a few people who said that agents take a keen interest in such anthologies. Or perhaps it’s because that no one has the time or money to collate/edit/design/publish such a thing.
All of these are valid reasons, and yet I got the sense from the new intake that there was a real energy for some kind of publication. Writers always need more publicity. They can never get enough. What do other people think? If you’re keen, what form should such a publication take? Who should edit/run it? If you’re not keen, then why not?
Why do so many PhD students get anxious about the commentary?
At just about at every PhD in Creative Writing seminar I’ve attended, someone shows some kind of anxiety about the commentary that has to accompany the PhD. This is the 30,000 piece that has to be “academic” in some shape or form, and accompanies the 70,000 word creative piece — if you’re writing a novel/life writing etc. Poets obviously have a much smaller word count…
It’s worth looking at the formal wording about the commentary from the University of London guidelines. This is the complete paragraph written about the Creative Writing PhD as a whole:
“Doctoral students for the PhD in Creative Writing combine their own creative writing with research into the genre or area of literature in which they were working, to gain insight into its history, development and contemporary practices. (This might be genre in the more traditional sense, for example, satire, fictional autobiography, verse drama, or particular traditions to which they felt their work related, for example, projective verse, postmodernist fiction, Caribbean poetics.) They would be expected to engage with relevant contemporary debates about theory and practice.
With regard to the examination, this comprises:
(i) Up to 70,000 words of creative work for a PhD or 40,000 for an MPhil.
(ii) A critical commentary on the work, relating it to past and present practice and to theoretical concerns, of up to 30,000 words for a PhD, or 20,000 for an MPhil.
Students register initially for the degree of MPhil and are considered for transfer to PhD at a point agreed with the supervisor. For the upgrade students are asked to submit an outline of the overall project; a synopsis of or extract from the critical commentary, of 1,500-3,000 words; a sample chapter of the creative text, of at least 10,000 words; and a timetable for completion.”
This is the FORMAL WORDING of this:
“In the field of English, a candidate may register to undertake research leading to a thesis submitted in accordance with the normal provisions. Alternatively, a candidate may submit, as part of a thesis, an original literary text written specifically for the degree. This text should show coherence and originality and attain a publishable standard, as determined by the examiners, which will include those qualified in academic research as well as the professional practice of writing. This text shall form the basis for a commentary on its structure, its use of dramatic, narrative or poetic technique, its relation to other literary works, and an exposition of the aims and concerns that lay behind its composition. The commentary should make clear that the candidate is well acquainted with the history and contemporary developments of the genre in which he or she is working in the creative portion of the thesis, and the critical field associated with it, and is able independently to analyse, interpret and evaluate debates and theoretical positions associated with it.”
I suppose this is reasonably clear IF you decide to comment at length on how you came to write the creative part of your PhD. However, if like me, you’re doing research which leads you beyond the narrow parameters of commenting upon your own work, the guidelines are not that clear. Most PhD students I’ve talked to are NOT commenting at length upon their own work, but doing some research in a field connected to their creative work. This is where the anxiety is created; there are no proper guidelines about WHAT should be in a commentary of this sort. Is this a good thing? With more stringent guidelines, you might be tied to writing something you don’t want to write. On the other hand, with clearer guidelines, you might feel a bit more confident about what was/is expected. For example, should it be made clear that you need to write in an academic style for the commentary? In the ECL department, PhD students obviously have to write in a very academic fashion, but is this necessary for the Creative Writing PhD?
Emma Darwin, one of the first Creative Writing PhD students, has written an interesting blog about this here.
What do other people think? Do we need to lobby for clearer guidelines? Or not??